Alcatel/Lucent merger dominates

The Alcatel/Lucent merger dominated the international ICT scene last week despite several other significant events, while at home the Telkom/Business Connexion situation stole much of the ICT headline space.

* The $34 billion merger of France`s Alcatel and US-based Lucent Technologies. The as yet unnamed new company, based in Paris, will be headed by Patricia Russo, current CEO of Lucent, with Serge Tchuruk, the current CEO of Alcatel, as chairman. The new company (a 60%/40% shareholding between Alcatel and Lucent) should see combined revenue well in excess of $20 billion per year and have a market capitalisation of about $35 billion. Job losses of over 8 000 are expected to generate savings over three years of $1.7 billion. The new company will set up an independent US company to look after classified contracts with the US government and military and could include Bell Labs. The other issue was Alcatel`s satellite businesses, which has now been resolved by Thales making the relevant acquisition for EUR1.7 billion.
* Microsoft gobbled up ProClarity, a leading player in the business intelligence space. ProClarity will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, which has also acquired Lionhead Studios, the UK games developer.
* NTL to buy Virgin Mobile in a deal worth $1.7 billion. Sir Richard Branson will be the largest shareholder in the enlarged group (10%) that will be re-branded Virgin within 12 months.
* Telkom SA announced its firm intention to make a bid for Business Connexion, a move that has stirred anger among members of the ISP Association.
* AU Optronics, the third largest maker of LCDs behind LG Philips LCD and Samsung Electronics, acquired Quanta Display, another LCD maker, in a deal valued at $2.2 billion. This brings its market share up to 19% as opposed to the 22% of each of the top two makers.

The as yet unnamed new company, based in Paris, will be headed by Patricia Russo, current CEO of Lucent, with Serge Tchuruk, the current CEO of Alcatel, as chairman.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Mediocre interim numbers from ERP.com with revenue marginally down but net profit down by 19%.
* A positive trading update from Paracon.
* Dimension Data acquired a 51% stake in ICL East Africa, a company based in Nairobi.
* The investment (20%) by Koketso Gravitas Consortium in EDS South Africa.
* The appointment of Lucky Masilela as chairman of ISETT SETA.
* Kensense, a German software company, opened a local office, headed up by Thorsten Freitag, ex-GM of Cisco Sub-Saharan Africa.
* Frederick Morrison, founder of Vesta Technologies, offered to buy out Bevdev, after which the company will change its name, restructure its capital and try to acquire new assets in order to maintain its JSE listing.
* Denel disposed of its 22.98% stake of arivia.kom to Eskom and Transnet, giving the two shareholders 45% and 55% respectively of the total arivia.kom shareholding.
* The de-suspension of Elexir`s shares prior to its reverse take-over by PSV Holdings and its demise as an IT company.
* Tracey Newman resigned as MD of FrontRange Solutions South Africa.

* Excellent year-end numbers from Orascom Telecom, with revenue up over 60% and net income more than double the equivalent period for the previous year.

* EDS bought a majority share in India`s Mphasis BFL Group for $380 million.
* Accenture acquired Pecaso, a management and technology consulting company.
* America Online changed its name to AOL.
* Crystel Telecommunications changed its name to Juma Technology.
* The appointments of Michael Brandofino as president and CEO of GlowPoint, David Fritz as CEO of Silistix, Neil Gaydon as CEO of Pace Micro, Michael Li as CEO of Linktone, Mohan Maheswaran as president and CEO of SemTech, Vivek Pendharker as CEO of Velogix, and Joshua Pickus as president and CEO of SupportSoft.
* The resignations of Radha Basu as CEO of SupportSoft (stays on as chairman), Martyn Ratcliffe as chairman of Microgen, and Vahe Sarkissian as chairman, president and CEO of FEI.
* The retirement of John Dyson as CEO of Pace Micro.
* Analyst upgrades for CheckFree, Ciber, Cree, FileNet, Linktone, Lucent Technologies, Marvell Technology group, Semiconductor Manufacturing International, Silicon Labs and Tessera Technologies.
* Analyst downgrades for Acxiom, AMIS Holdings, Asyst Technologies, AVX, Entrust, Extreme Networks, Fairchild Semiconductor, Foundry Networks, France Telecom, Global Payments, Internet Security Systems, Jabil Circuit, On Semiconductor, Powerwave Technologies, Radware, Research in Motion, RF Micro Devices, SanDisk and Vasco Data Security International.
* Positive results announcements from 3M, M-Systems Flash Disk, Napster, Nintendo, Phoenix IT Group and Sarantel Group.
* Negative result warnings from Apple, Catapult Communications, Check Point Software Technologies, Creative Technology, Entrust, Extreme Networks, Maxtor, Mercury Computer, Pixelworks, Powerwave Technologies, Radcom, Research in Motion, SafeNet, Symmetricom and Websense.
* A stock repurchase announcement from Novell.
* Job loss announcements from CSC, Maxtor, Optus and Sun Microsystems.
* Private funding obtained for Atrica, an optical Ethernet equipment developer; Clearwell Systems, an e-mail intelligence software developer; Siano Mobile Silicon, a mobile digital TV chipset developer; and Ubicom, a wireless chip developer.
* Stock offering announcements by ICT Group and On Semiconductor.
* Share split announcements from Benchmark Electronics (3:2) and VitalStream (reverse 1:4).
* An IPO filing for Nasdaq and Toronto from Corel that went private in 2003. Corel expects the listing will create funds that will be used to buy out WinZip Computing.
* Planned IPOs by Infineon Technologies AG of its memory products business group through a new company called Qimonda AG, and Omniture, a provider of on-demand Web analytics.
* Epicor re-stated its figures for 2003 through 2005.

* A possible buyer for Workstream, a provider of workforce management software.
* Suitors for CSC, which has put itself up for sale. A few months ago there were discussions with HP that came to nothing.
* The purchase by Ashmore Investment Management of Asia Netcom, the international undersea cable unit owned by Chian Netcom.

* WiMax will generate $53 billion revenue by 2011, says TelecomView.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.2%
* Nasdaq: No measurable change
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (-20%), Datacentrix (+11.1%), Idion (-10.8%), Paracon (+11.3%), Pinnacle (+11.9%), Trematon (+10.9%), Vesta (+42.9%) and Zaptronix (+69.2%).
* Top international share movements: CellStar (+25%), Com21 (-50%), DA Consulting Group (+127.3%), enherent (-26.7%), Entrada Networks (+100%), Entrust (-24.1%), Glowpoint (-23.4%), Level 8 Systems (+21.1%), PixelPlus (-33.6%) and SEMX (+33.3%).

The UK`s Financial Times has published the Brandz Top 100 most valuable brands listing. From a technology perspective, the list contains 29 companies with Microsoft heading the rankings at number one, followed by China Mobile at four, Google at seven and IBM at eight.

As the coming weekend is Easter, the next issue of Booth`s Bites will be published on Monday, 24 April.